Black.Cat's Journey - Getting out of my Comfort Zone

A LITTLE BACKGROUND
I've been here since January 2013. I used to work as a forum poster on a freelance site and a gig site. When I found BHW, I read a lot and picked several methods and implemented them. I started earning money, to $7 a day, and then took a nosedive to $0 and started from scratch and now I have come back up and regularly working on a couple of methods that earn me OK money. One thing that I've always wondered is, can I make money using Big G? So now, I'm gonna go out of my comfort zone and start a site aiming to monetize it using Big G or alternatives (in case I don't get an adsense account).

WHAT I HAVE
1. Basic Wordpress Skills
2. A Domain I bought from Namecheap for about $10
3. SSD Wordpress hosting I got from a giveaway here.
4. An EMD I got from a giveaway here with the following stats:
PPC COMP: High
Global Monthly Search: 2400
Local Monthly Search: 1000
CPC: $4.32

MY METHOD
I like bluematter's approach mainly because I can understand it so I think I'm gonna start from there.
I haven't checked yet if my EMD's specs are good for his method. Sadly, I don't quite understand a lot about that... YET.
But I am gonna get into that as soon as I'm done with my introductions.

REASON FOR THREAD
I'd like to document my journey and have an idea of what other BHW members think of how I am doing. Any tips or suggestions are welcome. If I am doing something wrong, let me know what you think. As I've said in the thread title, this is out of my comfort zone and any input will be appreciated.

There is a LOT to learn to being a success,
but it takes action and accountability,
as well as skills, knowledge and wherewithall.

I have seen from your posts that you are an honest sort of guy,
and that helps too.

My advice is to keep working at it, and not give up hope,
there will be good days and bad days ahead, learn from your mistakes,
remain positive and look after yourself;
don't just sit on your laptop/PC all day long,
fresh ideas will come to you as you clear your head with other stuff.

As you know, BHW is the number 1 resource for SEO - whether white hat or black hat -
but it is in the TAKING ACTION part that so many wannabie marketers fail,
that simple lack of self-discipline is the number 1 obstacle for many.

Posting a journey thread help you (and others) put things into a perspective, by
having deadlines, targets, goals etc....
so just update this thread regularly (daily if possible)
and remember that although 99.9% of BHW members may not post on your thread,
there are many who will read it and be inspiried, even if they do not post on it.

Good Luck and I hope you have success with ALL your online endeavours.
Cheers

First, Thanks Goal Line Technology for the kind words and for the reminder not to stay at the comp all day. It was very helpful for today. Three Hours after I started bluematter?s method, I experienced information overload. I went out for a walk to clear my head.

LONG STORY SHORT
I?ve already encountered some problems. First is that the EMD I got from zebrahat doesn?t fit the requirements for bluematter?s method. It doesn't necessarily mean that it?s no good. It just means that searches are too low compared to the guide I?m using. Also competing sites for the top 9 keyphrases with high CPC and high searches have high PRs (average of 2 sites per keyphrase have 0PR and the rest are beasts). The advantage is that it?s an exact match so I?m still gonna use it.
The reasons are:

1. For comparison purposes
2. I?m interested in the subject
3. I already have the domain and hosting anyway.

So what I?m gonna do is split this journey into 4 projects. The common theme among these 4 projects is that it is based on SEO and Ranking the sites. My previous projects were based solely on social networks.

These 4 projects would be:
SITE 1. The EMD I got from zebrahat (Content writing outsourced)
SITE 2. Another niche where I will research the keywords based on BM?s method (content writing outsourced)
SITE 3. Another niche where I will research the keywords based on BM?s method ( I?ll write the content since I?m very knowledgeable in the subject matter)
SITE 4. Another niche that targets local searches in my country. Not aimed to monetize with adsense but to check if I can rank in my country for keyphrases that has to do with my offline business. (I?ll write the content)

At a glance, it seems like I am trying to do too much too fast. But I?ve been in a similar boat before on other projects. What happened before was - I dropped some projects as the profitable ones became clear and those are my money makers now. If I can get even 1 of these projects to become profitable, I?d consider this a success. Also, in 2 of these projects, I will outsource the content writing.

Also, I?ve read before that it takes a while for the sites to be eligible to apply for an adsense account (I don?t have one yet) so I will probably check other ad networks and apply.

SMALL STEPS TO SUCCESS
1. Got the wordpress for the first site to work properly. Looks good. And faster than 96% of tested websites according to pingdom tools. Dunno if that?s due to the fact that it still doesn?t have any content or because of the SSD Wordpress Hosting running with nginx or whatever it is. I?ll test it again once I have a decent amount of content.
2. Learned to use the ff:
new google adwords tool
spyfu
ubersuggest
3. Learned niche research basics that I can apply to the other projects

That?s it for now as I have other tasks not related to this Journey. Tomorrow, I will do niche research and buy the domains.

STATS
Total Spent: $10.16 (for the 1st domain I bought last July, I think)
Total Earned:

QUOTE FOR THE DAY
?Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.? ?T.S. Elliot

LONG STORY SHORT
I fell asleep while writing this so this is a late post. Anyway, Here goes.

Since I?m not from the US, I wanted to know whether seoquake really does give out US search results so I made a couple of tests using my local chrome and firefox and my US VPS chrome and firefox. The result? My local chrome gives out different search results but my US VPS chrome and firefox and my local firefox with seoquake have identical results.
Now, for some reason, my version of seoquake doesn?t give out domain age results. It just gives out n/a. So I looked for something that gives that information.

Code:

[URL]http://www.bulkseotools.com/bulk-check-domain-age.php[/URL]

Code:

[URL]http://moonsy.com/domain_age/[/URL]

Anyway, After several hours (yes. hours, about 6+ hours. LOL, I guess that shows how noob I am in keyword research) of searching and checking the competing domains. I found a keyphrase that has the following stats:

6 of top 10 sites have keyword in title1 of top 10 sites have domain age of less than a year
8 of top 10 sites have PR under 4
Competition in Google is 90K+ results
It is not a seasonal keyword

Everything matched BM's requirements except for the item in red. But I grabbed it since 1 domain has less than a year and two are less than 3 years. BM's requirement for this is at least 2 sites with less than 2 years domain age. But I figured this is good enough. If I could kick that one site out of the picture, I'm good.

The EMD was taken (com net and org) so I put a prefix and bought the domain and hosting.

SUCCESS IN SMALL STEPS
1. Bought domain and installed wordpress
2. Done with keyword research
3. Learned about media.net (possible alternative in case I don't get accepted by Big G)

STATS
Total Spent: $15.82
Total Earned:

QUOTE FOR THE DAY
"Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment" - Jim Rohn

I haven't read all of bluematter's method yet but I have skimmed through it. Adsense is something I eventually want to tackle and seeing someone put it into work will help me out a lot. I'll be following your journey. Good luck! meow

Like Goal Line Technology said don't give up. If you are consistent with one method you will learn a lot. You will uncover things not mentioned in threads.

My only caution is that you should stick to one project. I believe you said in a subsequent post that you are going to split this project into four projects. Bad idea. Finish one even if the search count is low. Get it done so you can rinse and repeat with a better keyword or another niche.

LONG STORY SHORT
Thanks for all the well wishers. I wish you all very well in whatever endeavors you are in. And thanks for the tips. LOL. Goal Line Technology is right. I am indeed following that Journey. And yes ChoosenOne, as soon as I got to the "Deep Niche Analysis" part, I realized it wouldn't be easy to split this into 4 projects. That part alone will take me hours, if not days, I imagine... so for now, halt on the split projects. Maybe once I get the hang of it, I'll continue those, but for now, I'd like my focus to be on:

1. learning as much as I can and knowing the ins and outs of the method
2. making sure my moneymakers continue making money

Man. Where did the time go? I just got out of a maze. Basically, what happened was I installed the plugins BM put in there plus I activated akismet. On BM's journey, it seems that most of the people going through the journey alongside him know what they are doing. There weren't a lot of questions about the plugins. I, on the other hand, got stuck on the first plugin - All-in one SEO Pack. I did some reading and watching. For those like me who are noob/noobish in this, the following video might help you understand the plugin a little bit better.

One useful thing I found about the plugin is that it sets HOW the search engines would display my site when a user *FINALLY* sees it on the results. I think this should not be overlooked. I want my potential visitors to see a clean and professional looking entry in the search engine.

After setting it up, I just left the other values where they were as suggested by the video.

Now, I came across a term I didn't know before. Canonical URLS. I read a bit and found out that my site only goes to my wordpress site if I enter it with the www but if I type mysite.com, it goes to the old splash page when I first got the domain/hosting. Based on my readings, it would be best if I use just one format either the www. or the non-www. It also provides consistency to the site.

So I looked more into that as well and wrote this in my .htaccess (took me about 15 minutes to find .htaccess in my cpanel LOL.)

Apparently, what the code does is to point all requests for non www domain to the www domain.

The code worked. Now, whether this was a good or bad move, I don't know. But the reason for using www only made sense to me so I did it. If this was a bad move, please do inform me.

Also, forgive me for explaining things which may be common sense or common knowledge for a lot of you. The reasons I am trying to explain the things I don't understand are:

1. If I do this again in the future, I'll have the explanations handy.
2. Some noob like me may wander here and benefit from my explanation
3. If I understood the strategy or process incorrectly, maybe someone can point it out so that I can make things better.
4. I find that I learn more by trying to explain things.

So that's for today. Gonna go back to my money makers. Hopefully, my speed in doing things in this project will improve as I get the hang of it.

2. Downloaded and installed Market Sammurai (Didn't find it useful today since I'm done with the niche research but I played with it a little bit. Looks like a good tool for the future)

3. edited .htaccess to redirect all requests for mysite.com to www.mysite.com (again, not sure if this is a good move so feedback will be appreciated)

4. Installed analytics.

NEXT EPISODE
1. Read about the plugins I don't know about
a. wp-post ratings
b. hey. I'm almost done with the plugins
2. Install a favicon. I like favicons (also i googled "favicons bad for seo" and no relevant results came up so it's probably not bad idea ahaha)
3. Decide on which theme I will use. I already have one but I'm not too happy with it yet. I will think about it tomorrow when I am not sleepy.
4. Start deep niche analysis part

QUOTE FOR THE DAY
"I learned the value of hard work by working hard" - Margaret Mead

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